


Ton Egoisme M'Inquiete.

by kittydesade



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: F/M, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 17:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard and Jessamyn were much happier once, back when Richard was wilder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ton Egoisme M'Inquiete.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brigdh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigdh/gifts).



> Title taken from the Sting song "Perfect Love Gone Wrong"

Richard St. Vier was in a foul mood.

As a result, he had a table all to himself, and everyone in the adjoining chairs moved as far away from him as they conveniently could. Let him sit in the corner of shadowy miscreants and mutter to himself about how there wasn't anything to be had on any wealthy traveler from the Hill or going to it, they would mind their own business and be healthier for it. Richard's temper was well known in the city.

But not everyone in the tavern was _from_ the city. And by the time the tavern had filled up enough that strangers were doubling up at tables, it seemed inevitable that someone would eventually intrude on his thunderous mood.

"Were you expecting company?"

She had dark hair that glistened in the way of someone too concerned with appearances. Or, he admitted, someone who used her appearance as much for her profession as for any other reason. Her eyes were dark as well, reflecting the colors of the candle on the table, the metal of the plate. She wore her dress like a suit of armor, standing straight and tall like a man instead of folding herself properly into her skirts. He wasn't in a mood to be challenged.

"No," Richard stood, pushing his way out from behind the table. "I was just leaving."

"With your meal half-done and your drink half-empty? Perish the thought." The woman looked over to Rosalie, nodded. "At least finish your food before you go. I won't bite."

"I might," Richard pointed out, not taking his seat again. He didn't move further out into the room, either. At this point his choices were between deal with this intrusive woman or force his way through the crowd, neither of which looked like a good option. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for a quiet place to have a drink." She smiled, and all her teeth were even. "What are you doing here?"

 

Her name was Jessamyn, and she had a wit to her sharp as any sword Richard had ever handled in his lifetime. Sharp enough to make him think twice about seeing her again, and yet when he left that evening his face was flush with all the insults yet unsaid. And the compliments as well. They danced between pleasant conversation and teeth-grinding insults coated in a thin veneer of civility, just enough on the side of peace and calm that anyone occupying the tavern who didn't know Richard well would think they were two strangers getting along. Those who did know him kept well away from the table and one hand on their crockery.

Nonetheless, when he talked about her with Rosalie afterwards his tone was more that of curiosity than contempt and annoyance, and it wasn't long before their paths crossed again, this time over watching a game of dice.

"What do you want?" He didn't look around at her, had no reason to think she was looking for him or had followed him from anywhere, and yet the question lingered in his mind. The couple of times she'd come in the tavern when he was there her eyes had sought him out immediately, waited a heartbeat or two, and then moved on. As though, having satisfied herself that he was still there, she could attend to whatever other business she had.

She shrugged, not looking around at him, either. "I don't want anything from you." Which wasn't quite the answer to the question he'd asked, although it was the answer to the question he'd meant. He didn't realize there was a distinction to be made until she emphasized those last two words.

"But what do you want?"

Another little mysterious smile. He exhaled, puffing up his cheeks and blowing hard through nose and clenched mouth. "I'm not in the mood for games."

She laughed. "What makes you think what I want has anything to do with you?" Her last words got swallowed in the direction of the crowd as someone swept the pot.

Richard shook his head. "I'm not an idiot. I've seen the way you look at me. The way you look around to make sure I'm watching you when you come in the room. You want something." All women did. All people did, the women simply were more vicious because they had to hide their wants better. Or they did in polite society.

Society in Riverside was a bit different. Jessamyn looked at him with the kind of naked and cold evaluation that every man or woman with any degree of experience whatsoever was expected to display. Tallying up the advantages and disadvantages to every deal offered, it was just good survival practice. The whores did it before they pretended to love you, the pimps did it before they passed you on to their workers, the moneylenders did it before they coughed up their hard-won gold.

Her once-over was a little less cold than the others. "I hear you're good with a blade," was her opening move, and Richard snorted and looked away.

"Passable." Better than passable, but he didn't want to deal with another challenger or would-be teacher right now.

"I have a proposition for you."

And here it came. "I'm not interested in taking on any new jobs right now." Another garden party. She was slumming it for her employer, some sort of parlor room maid. She was pretty enough for it, at least, if not too lush.

"It's not a duel. Lord Winterborne's coach is due to come this way the day after tomorrow, and I need support."

Richard turned head and shoulders to stare at her more fully. "You mean to rob them."

She smiled. The light of the candles and the flicker cast up from the fireplace glinted off of her eyes. "I mean to rob them."

* * *

Despite knowing what day and approximately what time the coach was set to leave, they waited in the tall grass for nearly an hour by his estimation. She had bellied down in an indentation scraped out of the dirt, wearing trousers at least a size too big for her but that kept her warm and dry and able to move better than her skirts did. Richard couldn't quite stop stealing glances at her; she looked remarkably capable.

"Watch for the coach," she murmured.

"Is this something you do often? Go out with the girls for a bit of skipping rope, tea and cakes, highway robbery?" She laughed at him, as well she might for a question like that.

But she didn't reply, either, and after a little time had passed he decided not to press it.

The winds blew the clouds directly over them in a fit of elemental pique. Drops of something too solid to be rain and too liquid to be hail started down towards the backs of their necks. "This coach of yours had better come along soon," Richard grumbled.

"Patience really isn't your particular virtue, is it?"

He opened his mouth for a clever retort when the drops on the plants began to shiver. The ground shifted, didn't tremble but the attention with which he had sharpened his senses also told him that something was coming. Something on several legs and two wheels, heavy.

Jessamyn saw the same thing; he looked over at her and saw the determination written in the tight-drawn lines of her face. No need to ask if she was ready.

She leaped out first, startled the horses into stopping and rearing. Richard leaped out second, severed the traces in a couple of well-placed strokes. They wouldn't go far, just far enough to stop the coach from moving on while they robbed the contents and passengers. Lord Winterbourne should have expected it, really, the word on the Hill as far as he'd overheard on his last trip was that Riverside was restless. Folk were scraping by at the lower edges of what they were used to, and that made both tongues and blades sharper than usual. Richard had seen it his own self in the quarrels over dice games, accusations of cheating that had once flown across the table half in jest to liven up an evening were now pitched with desperation in the hopes that they were right, and money was owed.

Turning to highway robbery wasn't something Richard would have thought of, but if he could get a little more in the way of coin to pass around to his friends in exchange for food or drink, so much the better.

"Ready?" he called over to her. Quick and terse, so that their voices couldn't be recognized later.

"Ready."

They retreated back under the fall of trees, sword and dagger pointed at the coachman and the infuriated Winterbourne who had managed to turn himself a truly astonishing shade of reddish-purple and seemed to have lost the ability to speak in his apopleptic fit. Richard felt an unpleasantly gleeful smile settle on his face.

"See?" she told him, bouncing smugly on the tips of her toes as they made their way back into Riverside proper. "You enjoyed that."

"Maybe just a little." He kept his guard up against a surge of elation, not knowing what the worth of the jewelry they'd stolen was. They did have a fair sized purse of coin, though, and that was more than they'd had before. "You enjoyed it more."

She laughed in reply, not denying it. Definitely the sort of woman who lived on adventure and taking stupid risks for the promise of riches although he wondered, as he did every day he spent with her, what in the world could have persuaded her that this was a good idea. Women knowing how to use a knife and playing confidence games wasn't anything new to Riverside. Flaunting it as she did, that was different.

It caught and held his attention at least, and maybe that was the point. To catch the attention and confuse everyone so that they wouldn't know how to approach her. In swordplay, footing was half the battle right there. In social games, as he understood them, it was the same. So, she could battle in that arena as well as he could with a sword, and that explained where she got her information, if not how or from whom. It did not explain why she chose to fling herself headlong into thievery and highway robbery time and time again.

* * *

He had to admit, she had a gift for knowing paste from truth. She had better luck with her pick of coaches than he did, pulling real jewels and a fair amount of coin two times out of three. Soon enough they were, if not rolling in it, at least more prosperous than he had been on his own.

"You can't say we're not doing well as a partnership," she told him, twirling gaily around the tiny space he rented from Marie. The edges of her skirts came near to knocking over anything in their path, and she stopped just short of colliding with his dagger and whetstone. "You haven't had this much good fortune in... how long has it been again?"

Her smugness spoiled at least a portion of his sense of victory. "I got by well enough on my own."

"Still..." she came towards him, working her skirts from her hips down to the hems. "You can't say it hasn't been exciting."

Richard set his jaw and said nothing. She had been after him since their second job, for some obscure reason of her own and he, sensing an ulterior motive, had resisted. He was on the verge of capitulation now, if only because he had resisted for so long that she might not expect it. "It's been profitable." And enjoyable. Thrilling, even. In the way that he knew would get into trouble, and so he wouldn't admit it, not out loud at least.

"It's been more than that," she told him, though she didn't press forward any further when he didn't respond the way she wanted. Her eyes flicked up and down over him and she settled back on her feet, planting herself in that spot a couple of inches away. "We've had a good time of it. We find good targets, I," she corrected herself. "Find good targets. You help me take them of everything they have. You find the best places to sell off the jewels..."

"Except for the ones you keep." He meant that to be sardonic, but it came out with more quiet amusement and less of a threat. There were, not many of them, but there were one or two things over which she'd exclaimed like a debutante girl, clutching them to her and when he went to turn over the jewels to his fence they'd been missing. Careful as she was about her winnings, it was almost a relief the first time he had discovered that she liked beautiful things too, like any number of young men and women.

Like he did, even if he wouldn't say his tastes ran to the usual kind of beautiful. Fine clothes and trinkets didn't interest him, not when he'd stolen enough of them from passing coaches and he didn't know teal from turquoise; he wore what felt comfortable and gave him freedom of movement. He preferred simplicity in his beauty. Moments, rather than things, for the most part, although he did have a good appreciation for a well-balanced weapon made out of sturdy steel. A well defined set of movements from an experienced fighter.

Like Jessamyn, though she did little else to show that she had any kind of training or awareness of her body. But she could balance on the cross-beam of the traces of a carriage, leap from there to the seat to the roof and to the back again in four great jumps, and make it look effortless.

"Except for the ones I keep," she agreed after a second or three, nodding. Watching him with evaluating eyes and a pert twist of a smile that suggested she knew something about his thoughts that he did not. Which was ridiculous, but there it was, and an uncomfortable sensation as well. "I give you the equivalent portion to sell off, it's all fairly done."

"Yes," Richard agreed. He could be agreeable, see? "You're up to something. What is this all to do with, anyway? What are you doing it for?"

"Isn't the coin it brings in enough of a reason?" She stepped onto the chair again and twirled, by which point he'd had enough of this. He grabbed her by the waist and forced her to stay still.

"No," he grated. "No, it's not. Why are you doing this?"

"Because I want to do it," she told him, and put her hands on his shoulders and leaned down till her face was almost even with his, till their noses almost touched. "Because it's fun."

Her breath came hot on his lips and tasted of honey and spiced bread. Her hands pressed against his shoulders, though he knew she couldn't need to balance herself on him, she'd been in more precarious positions all by herself. His palms were sweaty, heat swirling between where his hands lay open against his thighs and the rough fabric of his trousers. He knew the thing to do would be to push her away; he knew there were several things he could do, each to their desired effect. But he had no idea what the effect he desired was.

He felt, more than saw her smile, she was that close. "Have you ever done a thing simply because it was fun?"

His breathing, rapid and shallow, made him feel as though he'd already run around the city at least once. "Yes," he retorted. Petulant. Sounding like a child who didn't know what he was agreeing to only that it was the better answer than 'no.' "On occasion."

"Of course you have," she smiled.

Everything after that fogged over between one touch and the next.

* * *

As the weather turned and the oncoming winter reduced the frequency of affluent coaches to a trickle they retreated indoors. By now they lived together in something not quite bliss and not quite a constant state of battle, but it suited them both. Richard careened off of every argument and into her arms and their bed, unable to keep his balance between the headiness of their lust and the hot-bloodedness of their arguments.

And if it had just been lust, he would have put a stop to it weeks ago. But it wasn't. There was something more to it than that, in the moments between the fights and the jobs and the long nights when neither of them slept, something he didn't have the words for.

"She has her days," Richard found himself defending their awkward and halting relationships to Katherine, once, over lunch and while Jess was out finding a new set of sword belt and frog that didn't pinch or fall down. "So do I, we both have a temper."

"And that temper will get the better of you one day, you mark me and see if it doesn't." Rosalie pointed a finger at him around an empty mug, but he waved her off.

"You don't seem happy, is all," Katherine explained. "I mean, you don't seem like yourself."

He wanted to point out that she didn't know him all that well to say when he was like himself or when he wasn't, except he didn't much know, either. It felt good to be around her, except when they were fighting. "I feel fine. I feel better than I have in... years." Which neither explained nor recommended anything.

Katherine shook her head, but didn't press it. It was Richard who insisted, after they'd gotten refills on their food and drink.

"It's not that we don't fight, we do fight," he couldn't deny that, half the street heart their fights. "It's that I feel... more. Around her than I ever have. She lives with some kind of vivid passion I don't think I've ever seen in anyone before..."

Katherine ducked her head at that, and Richard thought she smiled. "I don't think I've ever heard you compose poetry before, either."

He scowled. "It's not poetry. It's truth."

"That's what poetry oh never mind," she shook her head. "You're so caught up in it that you don't see how she spins you about. Highs and lows, both ways, it's not good for you. You'll be caught up in the high feeling of a challenge and you won't..."

"Are you telling me how to use a sword?" Richard asked, in a tone that suggested Katherine had better get the answer right or there would be consequences. Even if he didn't know quite what those consequences would be.

Katherine either didn't hear that undertone or her frustration overrode her better sense. "I'm trying to remind you that no matter how high you leap, you have to come back down to earth again. And she's making you jump higher and higher, she doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't even know where she's leaping to, she's devouring you with your fights and your..." she coughed, pink settling into the arch of her cheeks.

Richard chuckled. "I wasn't aware that being affectionate was a bad thing."

"It's not... oh, Richard. Don't you see what's happening here? She's keeping you so wound up you don't have time for a rest. And that could be... dangerous."

He shook his head, looking out through the open door and into the street beyond. Jess would be back any moment now, she knew his size and the size of his sword and it wouldn't take long. "Life is dangerous, Katherine. Taking challenges, dueling is dangerous. Robbing the coaches of the rich on the high road is dangerous..."

"Not so loud," she hissed, not that anyone in the tavern would care if they heard what he'd done, not that at least.

"Jess and I understand each other. It may not always seem like it, but we do." And that, his stare suggested, was an end to that.

Later, when he had washed the blood off of his hands and burned his clothing, after the smell of spilled perfume and burnt hair had cleared his senses, later he would ask himself how well they'd understood each other, how well she had understood him. Or, more frighteningly, how well he had understood her intentions.


End file.
